Kakheti Wine Tour

Any Georgian will proudly tell you that Georgia is the birthplace of wine. Our tour guide told us about the archeological evidence that the ancient way of making wine in a large clay pot capable of holding hundreds and even thousands of liters of wine called qvevri [pronounced kwevri] goes back at least 8,000 years. However, the recently found earliest qvevri are now estimated to be around 11,000 years.

So if you ever come to Tbilisi, Georgia, you will miss out if you don't go on a wine tour. Especially during the height of the grape season, like we - my three teacher-researcher colleagues and I - did this past Sunday. It was a whole day trip in a minivan, from 9 am to 9 pm, but it was one of the best travel experiences I've ever had in my life. It's not only about wine, so bear with me as I hope you will enjoy this historical and cultural tour vicariously as well.

Kakheti is the largest eastern-most administrative region of Georgia that borders Azerbaijan in the east and Dagestan (Russia) in the north, through the great Caucasus mountains. Its mostly rural wine-growing population is between 310-320K people, and its capital Telavi has only about 19K people living in it. It took us about 45 minutes from Tbilisi to reach the first tour stop in Kakheti - the village of Manavi.

We visited a family-run winery that makes wine from the famous Saperavi (dark purple-blue, almost black) grapes. This was the first tasting experience where we were treated to various versions of Saperavi wines and chacha - a high-volume vodka-like transparent alcohol with various flavors. Our tour guide Timur lead the tasting himself, accompanying it with famous elaborate toasts to love, friendships, and good life experiences. Georgians can toast, that's for sure!

I bought the sweeter Saperavi wine with the pomegranate flavor, in the plastic bottle in the cover picture. It cost 25 lari (a little over $9). We tried six or seven different versions of Saperavi, ranging from what Georgians call "white" but in fact is closer to rose because of its pink color, and dark red in color. The pomegranate Saperavi was my absolute favorite.

The same family, as it turned out, makes honey with different flavors as well. We tried Georgian brandy with the chestnut, acacia, and raspberry honey and it was absolutely delicious. Because it's so rare, I had to buy the raspberry honey, even though it was a little pricey - 40 lari, or $15 - for a 250-gramm jar. There was a perk, however: I bought two and they gave me a small jar of chestnut honey (surprisingly, with a strong chocolaty flavor) as a gift.

We tried our hand at making churchkhela at this family winery, but I already ate mine. I go through them quickly, so no picture in the loot. But if you are interested in what it is, I wrote a story about churchkhela earlier. The Saperavi grapes and a sweet pomegranate in the picture are also from this family winery.

After Manavi, we stopped at the village of Badiauri to see how the traditional Georgian bread is made and baked on the inner walls of a large round clay oven called tone (pronounced tone-eh, and probably from the same root as tandoor/tandyr/tanduri). We tasted this canoe-shaped bread, called "dedis tsremli puri" ("mother's tears bread"), referring to the times when Georgian mothers had to make bread for their sons going to battle various invaders, adding their tears to the dough in the process.

At this place, we also tried chacha and traditional Georgian cheese - cow, sheep, and goat. Both cow and sheep cheeses were too salty for me, but the goat cheese was absolutely delicious and I bought a big slice of it (in the picture with the little holes all over).

As one of the two oldest Christian cultures in the post-Soviet space (Armenia is even older), Georgia has a lot of ancient Orthodox churches and cathedrals. So no tour of Georgia, even a wine and cheese tour, will be complete without a cultural aspect of visiting an old church. We stopped at the Bodbe Monastery of St.Nino, who allegedly came from the same time and place in modern-time Turkey as St.George and adopted Christianity as a 12-year-old girl. She is credited with bringing and spreading Christianity in Georgia. St.Nino is buried at the Bodbe Church (no pictures allowed inside), and it was one of the most beautiful and picturesque sites in Georgia I have visited so far.

And then we went to the town of Sighnaghi, famous as "the city of love." It is a beautiful town on top of the mountain that used to be important for Silk Road trade in ancient times. But it lost its significance after a railroad charted a new trade route and was nearly forgotten. In early 2000s, the former president Saakashvili visited the town, was absolutely charmed by it and decided that it needs to be rebranded and put on the global map again. So they allowed the city administration to marry anyone from anywhere in the world, and you can do it in 20 minutes! It's a Georgian version of Las Vegas and tourists love it for it.

We stopped on the way to Sighnaghi at a place with a zip line running to the town (I would love to ride it at some point). This is where I was finally able to buy the last jar of the famous Georgian walnut jam. It is made of young walnuts, still covered in their green outer peel, and is considered to be one of the greatest Georgian delicacies. In the picture, it is a small dark-colored jar between the grapes and the pomegranate wine. I have not tried it yet.

When we got to the town, we had a city tour and a very late 3 pm lunch. On the way to the restaurant, we stopped by a WW2 memorial with the names of Georgians from 27 Kakheti villages who were killed in the war.

Another part of the wall with the heroes' names.

And one more, featuring peaceful life of wine growing and making interrupted by the war, as the men had to leave their women and children behind:

Our last wine tasting (while the food was being made) was lead by a professional wine guide from the famous commercial winery - Sighnaghi Estate - that still uses the ancient qvevri method of wine making. Below is a picture taken by a friend in our party of the large qvevri under the glass in the floor of the winery. They were being cleaned out for the next cycle.

The guide told us about many different wines made on the estate - Rkatsiteli, Saperavi white, rose, and red, Kisi, Kindzmarauli, and what became my favorite, and of course the most expensive - Khvanchkara. I bought a bottle of it for 80 lari - $30, only because it is indeed rare and much more expensive in Tbilisi.

After the wine and food experience, we walked along the ancient wall of Sighnaghi.

Our tour guide Timur of Imperial Tours in Tbilisi featured here wearing the traditional Georgian hat in the Sighnaghi old street was knowledgeable, patient, and friendly.

We arrived in our final stop, Telavi, quite late, after 7 pm, so it was only a short stop to admire the charming old town architecture and to visit with another young colleague who is teaching in Telavi. That visit was too short, but we hope we'll be able to see each other again soon.

We also took a moment to visit with a 900-year-old sycamore tree that was featured in Mimino, a famous Soviet movie about an accidental friendship between a Georgian civil aviation pilot and an Armenian tradesman. I highly recommend that movie. As I was standing next to the tree in Telavi's main square at twilight, memories from the Soviet adolescence triggered by the movie washed over me. I must admit they were pleasant but that was probably one of the very few good memories of my Soviet life, romanticized in a Georgian movie.

After Telavi, we made one more stop - on the top of a high mountain (over 1,600 meters) on our way back to Tbilisi. It gave us a chance to see how high we were and appreciate the beautiful warm night with the stars just starting to break out in the night sky. We got back to Tbilisi a little after 9 pm, completely exhausted and extremely happy.